Quantum Mechanics And Mr. Chicken

May 28, 2011

The next time you hear or read someone dismissing roadside attractions as a waste of brain space, tell them about Mr. Chicken.

Mr. Chicken — who happens to be an alligator* — lives at Gatorama in Palmdale, a classic Florida attraction started by the legendary late Cecil Clemens. It’s an unlikely place for anything cerebral, unless you count the sun-bleached skulls of the alligators killed by Goliath, Gatorama’s biggest and meanest resident.

Thankfully for science, Mr. Chicken evaded Goliath’s wrath and became the subject of a field study by Boston University undergraduate Peter Moriarty. Peter played gator calls to Mr. Chicken, Mr. Chicken responded with infrasonic rumbles, and the rumbles rising from his back produced patterned “Faraday waves” on the surface of his swampy pond. According to an article in Science News, these weird patterns — linked to instability and wave function in quantum theory — have never before been seen produced by something other than a man-made device. Apparently Mr. Chicken (and most other alligators) have been doing it for eons.

Peter has reportedly built a replica of an alligator’s back so that he can attempt to recreate Mr. Chicken’s talent in the lab.

Roadside attractions like Gatorama have long been an untapped resource for our intellectual elite. Thanks to Mr. Chicken, perhaps the intelligentsia will now recognize their value. Only then can our mermaids teach aquatic scientists how to live under the sea, and our flying saucer builders provide the breakthrough schematic that will get us to Mars, or somewhere closer to it.

*Mr. Chicken the alligator should not be confused with the other Roadside-worthy Mr. Chicken, who oddly enough is also not a chicken.

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Watch Gladiators, Flee The Minotaur, Then Buy A Pumpkin

May 16, 2011

Chris Gounalakis wants to sell you a pumpkin. He knows how to do it, too. He’ll get you to come to his farm to watch the gladiator battles, or to be chased around its labyrinth by a live minotaur.

“Why would you drive 30, 100 miles from this place to go in the mud and pick a pumpkin? You can do that at Safeway,” said Gounalakis, whose Arata’s Farm occupies eight acres south of Half Moon Bay, California. “We’ve found a way to make farming fun.”

Gounalakis, who emigrated from Greece in 1969, built his farm’s first labyrinth in 2001. It’s grown in size and complexity every year, with turrets, arches, and seven-foot-high walls made of thousands of bales of hay. The live minotaur was a later addition (he roams the labyrinth on weekends) as were the gladiators, who arrived as swordfighters who just wanted to rent the maze for private battles. Gounalakis turned them into gladiators, built them a hay bale fighting pit, then replaced it with an elaborate hay mini-Coliseum.

Other attractions have appeared on his farm as well, from the traditional hay rides and petting zoo to a miniature train and a haunted barn (admission is charged for some, like the labyrinth; others are free, like the gladiator battles). Gounalakis plants his pumpkins with corn to create a half-mile-long undulating “Pumpkin River,” visible from space.

Gounalakis is not the only farmer with a spectacular approach to pumpkin sales. And some people don’t like it. He recently had to appear before the county Agricultural Advisory Committee, which recommended that he be denied the permits that would allow him to operate as anything other than a traditional pumpkin farm. “They ought to be happy that we draw so many people out here,” said Gounalakis, who believes that “radical groups” are behind his opposition.

Gounalakis feels that he has enough local support to outweigh his foes and open for business in late June, as he does every year. And he won’t give up the gladiators or the labyrinth, which he says are instructive for children. “It’s based on education. I’m not gonna budge on that.”

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Fame! Too Much of it is Killing Fireman Statue

May 11, 2011

In 1970, two young firemen built a statue outside the Central Fire Station in Lafayette, Louisiana. It’s a fireman, stripped to his undershirt, bent over a hose that’s writhing like a giant snake, pointing toward an unseen inferno with a dramatic gesture.

Forty years ago it was just a home-built statue to honor firemen. But as decades have passed, the statue has come to look more and more like an erotic dancer or a member of the Village People. It now has its own Facebook page: Lafayette Gay Fire Fighter. Photos across the web show the statue draped with leis, feather boas, and Christmas tree bulbs, accompanied by grinning fans.

Things came to a head in late April 2011, during Lafayette’s annual Festival International de Louisiane. The fire department hid the statue beneath a tarp (removed after the festival) and fire chief Robert Benoit went on local TV to ask viewers to please stop trashing his department’s statue.

Chief Benoit told us that the fire department has no problem with its statue’s newfound fans, and it doesn’t mind that people want to take pictures. But the statue wasn’t built to handle this much attention. “Had we not covered it up, someone probably would have broke off its hand,” he said. “It’s not a swing to swing on. It’s not to ride like you would a bull. Take pictures with it if you want to, but don’t destroy it.”

The statue, according to Chief Benoit, is already brittle from 40 years exposure to Louisiana weather. To save it for future generations of admirers, Lafayette’s firefighters are pooling their money and will soon erect an iron fence around the statue, tall enough to discourage would-be posers, but low enough to accommodate shutterbugs.

“We’re just asking for respect; it’s a memorial for us,” said Chief Benoit. “We want it to stay there for as long as the Lafayette Fire Department exists. You don’t have to hang on it to take a good picture.”

Sections: Attraction News, Statues
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How We Almost Lost Our Atomic Marbles

May 8, 2011

Richland, Washington (Home of “The Bombers”), has never shied from showing pride in its nuclear heritage. But its loyalty was recently tested when the local museum stopped selling “atomic marbles” in its gift shop. There was fear that the iconic souvenir might be bought out by opportunistic profiteers.

According to director Ellen Low of the CREHST Museum (Columbia River Exhibition of History, Science, and Technology), atomic marbles are made by lowering normal marbles into a tank with radioactive cobalt-60. Gamma radiation kicks around the marbles’ electrons and changes their clear glass to a honey brown/gold color (Hint: the longer the exposure, the darker the marble). For years the museum sold the marbles out of a gumball machine, then later in single packages. “We thought that the machine might be a little bit dangerous because small children might mistake them for gum,” said Ellen.

One museum employee started using the marbles to make necklaces and earrings. The jewelry was sold in the gift shop along with the single marbles. Then one day a young woman came in, saw that the marbles were sold cheaply compared to the jewelry, and bought a lot of marbles. She said that she would use them to make and sell the same kind of atomic accessories herself.

Protective of its employee, concerned that its marble supply might be exhausted by bulk-purchase nuclear entrepreneurs, the museum stopped selling its single marbles. The only way for tourists to purchase the marbles was to buy the necklaces and earrings. “It was Marble Wars,” said Ellen.

But the public was displeased. Phone calls were received, according to Ellen. The local newspaper weighed in with an editorial. “We listened to what they had to say,” Ellen said, and the museum crafted a compromise: it has resumed sales of individual atomic marbles, but will limit them to two per person. “Nobody’s gonna buy more than a couple for personal consumption,” said Ellen. “It keeps everybody happy.”

Sections: Attraction News, Souvenirs
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Rt. 66 Bus Arrives To Bewitch The Faithful

May 7, 2011

Route 66 is America’s most loved road. Bob Waldmire was its most loved driver. Does that make Bob’s bus America’s most loved vehicle?

It’s a tricky question, since Bob had two buses. Probably one of them is America’s sweetheart, and both are now on display at the Route 66 Hall of Fame and Museum in Pontiac, Illinois.

Bob was Route 66′s roving ambassador and resident hippie. He was never far from it: his family runs the Cozy Dog Drive In (birthplace of the Hot Dog On A Stick) and for years he owned the Hackberry General Store, both iconic Route 66 attractions. For over three decades he wandered the highway in his 1972 VW Hippie Bus, creating busy-bee Robert Crumb-esque pen-and-ink drawings of his travels, delighting his admirers when he would just show up somewhere along The Mother Road.

Bob’s Hippie Bus was the inspiration for “Fillmore” in the movie Cars. The character was originally named “Waldmire,” but Bob asked that it be changed when he learned that toy versions of the bus would be sold at McDonald’s.

Bob died in 2009 of cancer. He theorized that his disease was caused by his life-long love of processed snack foods (a common weakness of carb-fueled road-trippers).

Bob’s other vehicle — the one in which he spent his last days — was an old school bus fitted with a hand-built wooden camper top. It resembles a ramshackle houseboat on wheels, and probably struck terror in approaching vehicles on the narrower parts of Route 66.

There was some confusion after Bob’s death as to which of Route 66′s many Route 66 Museums would get his buses — the equivalent of a normal museum getting a Space Shuttle. The Hippie Bus went to the Route 66 Hall of Fame and Museum — and now the Camper Bus is there as well. It was Bob’s home as well as his vehicle, and its Bob-centric interior has been preserved pretty much as he left it. Tours are given when someone in the museum is free with the key, and museum reportedly has had difficulty getting awed Route 66 tour-goers to leave the bus after they enter it.

“Bob lived his life the way he wanted to,” said Marty Blitstein, museum treasurer and sometime tour guide. “Whenever I’m in there, I know he’s in that bus.

Sections: Attraction News
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Bigfoot, Aliens, Bug Food Thrive In The Peculiarium

May 2, 2011

Would you rather eat ice cream that’s been sprinkled with dead bugs, or have a photo of yourself being disemboweled by aliens? At the Peculiarium in Portland, Oregon, you can have both.

The Freakybuttrue Peculiarium and Museum opened in mid-April 2011, offering a range of options previously unavailable at a single attraction. There’s a life-size pose-with-me Bigfoot, a ventriloquist-murdering dummy strapped into an electric chair, a motel room where everything is coated in glow-in-the-dark paint and visitors are encouraged to add phosphorescent graffiti.

“It’s a warehouse of things we like, crazy stuff,” said Mike Wellins, one of the group of local artists that oversees the Peculiarium, which can vaguely be described as a combination fringe art gallery, carnival midway, cafe, and 21st century Cabinet of Curiosities. “We’re fortunate that we live in a city with a huge fan base for stuff that’s not normal.”

Mike is especially happy that the Peculiarium is real, not a web site masquerading as a museum. “My career has been doing animation and lots of computer stuff, but I also like painting and using a drill gun,” he said. “I think that people want a real place to go to, rather than click to. You can’t eat a bug sundae over the internet.”

The bug sundaes, phosphorescent room, and Interactive Alien Autopsy have proven so popular that they’ll likely stick around, according to Mike. But the Peculiarium was conceived to be flexible, with new exhibits replacing the old. “People have a lot of weird stuff; for a proper gallery it would be too strange,” said Mike, trying to explain the Peculiarium’s admission criteria. “If it’s a landscape that has an aircraft carrier and a unicorn in it, that’s our style.”

Mike is particularly excited about an upcoming exhibit on spontaneous human combustion, and another titled, “Star Wars fan, Star Trek fan fight to the death.”

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